“White lives, for the forces which rule in this country, are no more sacred than black ones, as many and many a student is discovering, as the white American corpses in Vietnam prove. If the American people are unable to contend with their elected leaders for the redemption of their own honor and the lives of their own children, we, the blacks, the most rejected of the Western children, can expect very little help at their hands; which, after all, is nothing new. What the Americans do not realize is that a war between brothers, in the same cities, on the same soil, is not a racial war but a civil war. But the American delusion is not only that their brothers all are white but that the whites are all their brothers.”

The Poor People’s Campaign was being organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when Dr. King was murdered in Memphis while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers. King and SCLC believed that a living wage was a key to creating the “beloved community” and a basic human right.

The second piece is an essay I am writing on the connection between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, two men committed to fighting poverty and war and who were deeply committed to Civil Rights. As you know, they were both murdered within two months of one another in the spring of 1968.

I am delighted to be a part of The Black Lion and honored to have a platform for my writing.